A little over six months ago we announced a scrappy skunkworks project to pilot a developer solution based on Ubuntu 12.04LTS and our sleek XPS 13 laptop. Thanks to the amazing feedback and support we have received from the community, today we are announcing the availability of the resulting official product – the Dell XPS 13 laptop, developer edition.

What’s exactly is it?

Here is an overview of the components of this client-to-cloud solution and some key facts:

*Updated 11/30/12: the community pointed out we had not priced consistently across our online stores, this has been fixed. This offering was always intended to be priced less than Windows.

Availability

Small office/consumer – U.S.

Enterprise – U.S./Canada

Outside the US – early 2013

Community projects: Profile tool and Cloud Launcher

The profile tool and cloud launcher are beta open source projects that we have just kicked off on github. These projects are quite nascent at this point and we are looking for more people to get involved and help get them going (hint, hint 🙂 ) .

Profile Tool: The idea behind the profile tool is to provide access to a library of community created profiles on github, such as Ruby and Android, to quickly set up your development environments and tool chains.

Cloud launcher: The cloud launcher enables you to create “microclouds” on your laptop, simulating an at-scale environment, and then deploy that environment seamlessly to the cloud. Today the launcher utilizes Linux Containers to model your environment on your laptop and then uses Juju to jettison that environment to the cloud. The launcher project on github will allow for community expansion on this concept using different technologies and approaches.

How did we get here?

As I mentioned at the beginning, project Sputnik began as a skunkworks effort. It was made possible by internal incubation fund designed to bring wacky ideas from around the company to life in order to tap innovation that might be locked up in people’s heads.

Just weeks after the basic concept was greenlighted by the innovation team, it was publically announced as a pilot project at the Ubuntu developer summit. The big focus of our efforts, particularly in the beginning, has been to work with Canonical to make sure that we had the appropriate drivers for all functionality including the pesky touchpad.

From the start, the idea was to conduct project Sputnik out in the open, soliciting and leveraging direct input from developers via our Project Sputnik StormSession, comments on this blog, threads on the Sputnik tech center forum as well as the project Sputnik beta program. In fact it was the tremendous interest in the beta program that convinced us to take Project Sputnik from pilot to product.

I would like to give a special shout out to the beta cosmonauts who signed on. They were an intrepid lot who were patient and diligent working through issues to help make sure that when we went to production we had a product that developers would want.

Where do we go from here?

The next big thing for XPS 13 developer edition is availability outside the United States. We are working with teams inside of Dell to make this so as quickly as we can. The other direction we are looking at potentially expanding is offering a bigger beefier platform for developers. The XPS 13 is perfect for those who want an ultra light and mobile system but we have heard from a bunch of devs who would also like an offering that was more workstation-like with a bigger screen and more RAM.

Today is a very proud moment for our team, putting together an official Dell offering for developers with their input and suggestions through out the process. Stay tuned for more to come!

Pau for now…

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2012 at 8:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Thought I might regret taking the black friday deal on the XPS 13, but I’m pretty OK with it: for half the price, I got a machine with less RAM and SSD, an i5 instead of i7, and had to install Ubuntu myself– but I think it’ll still be a fine machine for hacking Python and Javascript.

[…] While making drivers work was a “big focus” of the work with Ubuntu-backer Canonical, the Sputnik Ultrabook also features a few key programmes to make it more useful for developers, said project leader Barton George in a blog post. […]

Exactly.. the system would be perfect if you guys put into the next version a better screen. I hate to compare products with apple-products but if i go in to the next store and i see the nice resolution of a 13″ retina macbook its hard for me to ignore that and just stay happy with a resolution like that. even my 4 year old 13″ thinkpad x301 brings a better resolution (1440×900).. but anyway, i am really happy that dell brings a great computer with ubuntu. i was waiting for this moment for years and if you update the screen, i will buy one 🙂 thanks anyway for the great job

Well done guys! Thanks for making it possible, and thanks for the 8GB of RAM! It would be a lot more comfortable for using VM.
I’ll buy one as soon as it gets available in the EU.
I’m currently running under Gentoo with the i7 version and I can’t wait to see how Ubuntu would perform on the new version of the Ultrabook.
Thanks again!

So don’t be discouraged if you see low sales. This would be a perfect laptop if the screen resolution was higher. Developers need higher res screens so that they can view more code at a time.

Watching 720P movies while flying in the air isn’t what we use this for. We use this for coding at coffee shops or at impromptu hackathons, and screen resolution matters a lot. (When at the desk a lot of us just connect to a 24″ or bigger monitor.) So while the small size rocks (we’re more likely to carry it around and code more), the low res screen doesn’t (akin to coding through a peep hole).

Hopefully you can take this info back to your meetings and push for higher res screens to target your market better.

Saurav, thanks for the feedback. I will definitely it take back to the team. Its all about getting something out there for folks to react to and then incorporating the feedback and building better products!

A +1 for higher screen resolution. I’m currently on the market for a new laptop and display resolution has been my primary criterion alongside machine size (between 14″ and 15″ would be excellent).

The Latitude E6530 is a nice machine with reasonable resolution but isn’t something you want to be carrying around (both heavy and large). The E6430 on the other hand is perhaps a bit small and has a downright aenemic display which makes development a nightmare without an external monitor. Sadly, this pattern is exhibited across all vendors.

Hi Barton, many congrats on the launch. I have been following the developments thanks to Mike Gunderloy’s sputnik updates.

I have a query: If I get this from the US via a friend visiting India, will it work with the 230V supply in India – perhaps if I buy an Indian power cord from Dell India (hope they do sell that!)? May be a stupid question, but just thought will get it clarified. Thanks.

Would love one, as most if only it had a better screen resolution, I could also use a bigger screen (14″), and perhaps a graphic card!
Thanks for making Linux available natively!
Please also don’t forget EU.

+1 for higher-res screen and 16GB RAM. I’m currently on a 13″ MBP but run Windows as my primary OS (but would love to have Linux). Currently Sputnik would be a downgrade for my on my 1.5 year old (yet upgraded) laptop. I could live with 8GB on Linux but not Windows. A higher-res screen is non-negotiable for me.

– I agree with others that the screen resolution is too low. While it’s certainly not unusable, it just seems rather outdated in 2012 for the developer demographic. As others have mentioned, vertical pixels are very valuable to developers who deal with a lot of text.

A question for those complaining for resolution specs… What the hell do you do with higher resolution on a13” screen? I want to be able to read what I see on the screen… And i want to do that for 8 hours without Going blind… I valuate much more screen quality, instead.

Burton, this new version of xps13 mount the same hd from Samsung as the first generation?
Thanks.

“I still don’t want big luggable laptops, but that 1366×768 is so last century. Christ, soon even the cellphones will start laughing at the ridiculously bad laptop displays.

And the next technology journalist that asks you whether you want fonts that small, I’ll just hunt down and give an atomic wedgie. I want pixels for high-quality fonts, and yes, I want my fonts small, but “high resolution” really doesn’t equate “small fonts” like some less-than-gifted tech pundits seem to constantly think.

In fact, if you have bad vision, sharp good high-quality fonts will help.”

When someone chimed in about fonts being too small, he answered:

“ever heard of “scaling”?

The web page stays the same size. No microscope needed. But the fonts turn out beautiful. And us people who want lots of text, can get it, and it’s still readable.”

What he’s saying is that high resolution doesn’t mean small text. That may have been true on some operating systems in the pats, but it’s not true on a modern Linux system. The fonts can be scaled to larger sizes, and the extra pixels simply make the text a lot more clear.

I *really,* *really,* *really,* want to support Dell (or any other HW mfg) for putting together a device that considers FOSS community. I think sputnik is great and I’d like to support it with my dollars. This is sooo close, but just not quite what I need.

I already own an 13.3″ i7 ultrabook with 4GB memory and 240GB SSD — and it was significatnly cheaper (Acer s3 951). However wireless driver support from broadcom sucks! After using it for 6months I’ve decided I need to upgrade. The hardware *must* work with linux … plus, I must have a larger screensize with, 8GB+ memory, and better keyboard+trackpad.

Awesome! Just put my order in. While the screen res is not ideal, it is workable on a developer machine, and is a small sacrifice to make to support this effort. I hope to see Dell continue in this direction. Now i just need to figure out what to do with my mid2012 15″ MBP. Congrats on the release!

Amazing product! Very tempted to purchase but a few factors caused hesitation.
One of the great features Dell has always offered over the years has been the ability to customize the hardware configuration when ordering a computer. Why does this offering come with a fixed hardware configuration? Personally, the price point is a bit high for me and I’d prefer to drop the 256GB SSD to 128GB or even 64GB depending on the pricing impact in an effort to reduce the overall price.
Also, in the way of future upgrades, is the motherboard capable of handling more RAM than 8GB? I scoured the forums, blog posts and Dell’s web site and was only able to obtain an answer through Dell Chat. I was told the motherboard max RAM capacity is 8GB. There are other ultrabooks on the market with 16GB RAM capacity and for developing, especially if a VM is loaded, more RAM is essential.
A great way to truly attract developers is to provide technical developer information, such as the maximum amount of RAM the motherboard supports.
If Dell isn’t able to provide this developer edition ultrabook with the ability for the customer to configure some of the hardware, at least provide a few different levels and price points to chose from. Generally, offering two different amounts of RAM or two different size SSD drives will not impact or require any extra software drivers or coding.
Thanks again for this product and project. Look forward to being able to purchase a Dell product!

@Barton: Also, it would be great if you can incorporate a higher resolution screen in the same 13 inch form factor. This would be more helpful than just having a higher resolution screen at a higher screen size (and hence a bulkier, heavier and less portable laptop) of 14 or 15.x inches. Thanks!

I could not wait.. had to order a laptop for work, so you can mark up my purchase to the Sputnik program. Dell Enterprise Canada seems to have the old model still listed for around $1800 so I imagine that’s why the new one is listed at $2400. You do get a slightly better processor 3.2Ghz vs 3.0Ghz with the Dev model as opposed to the Win model which seems strange.

I gave it a burn in running a video conference that evening from 8pm to about midnight, it held up but was warning me that I was down to the last 20 minutes of life. That’s out of the box plus some updates, running Google Hangout, and I think I left the keyboard light on. I was also ssh’d in installing software, running Dropbox, Ubuntu One, and CrashPlan to sync it up with my life, so not exactly a quiet evening for it.

I haven’t given it a good workout since, but generally I’m finding that it holds up nicely around the house and will not need the adaptor if fully charged.

I am getting about 4.5 hours developing with the screen on full brightness. Developing in C++ & node.js. I have a VM running with my node.js directories rsyncing every 5 secs. Normal productivity apps running, such as browser with gmail & hotmail, thunderbird for corporate, a caldav service and skype. Have used it up to 6 hours in the same way with the screen at minimal brightness, but have not fully drained it this way yet.

I thought I replied to this already. Yes, my brightness controls are working fine. When I first got the machine, everything worked until I did a software update through the Update Manager GUI, which broke brightness, lid-suspend, and a few other things. I ran the recovery to factory, then did a sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade. After this, brightness still works. Some packages are held back though, so I suspect Update Manager did a dist-upgrade rather than just an upgrade, and there was something there that broke it. At this point, all is working as expected except hibernate/resume with the lid, but I am farily confident this is my own doing. I have my system set up to start/take down a bunch of stuff on boot, including virtual box VMs, rsync jobs, etc so I have custom pm-utils/sleep.d scripts that are probably a bit buggy.

Ah, so my hibernate problems were two-fold. The first was my apt-get update must have pulled in the following bug, which was a trivial tweak to the referenced script to fix: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pm-utils/+bug/1007924. The second issue was something I did in my script to hibernate my VM when the laptop hibernates. All is now working as expected.

Just took mine out of the box a few hours ago – I’m writing on it now. Beautiful machine. Started coding right away. I am coming from a 15″ MBP, and the screen is really not an issue for mme. I do have a few _minor_ (mostly cosmetic) comments.
– The quick start guide was all about windows 8.
– It would be really cool if the super key was an ubuntu key.
– I was hoping for a sputnik sticker.
Also, in terms of marketing, ‘sputnikizing’ the logo on the back would go a long way. That way, when these things start showing up in videos of technical presentations, people will know exactly what machine it is.

Yeah, I was kind of expecting a nice letter from Dell or the Sputnik team in place of the the Quick Start Guide, possibly pointing me to the profile and cloud tools which I’m still not clear on, do I download those? Which version is the “official” version?

I terms of official I mostly mean a release or a release branch, but from your post about changing the approach for the profile tool, I wasn’t sure if what was on github represented the new approach or the old one.

A Dell/Sputnik Team/Community blessed getting started branch would be good Quick Start material too. A wiki page with maintained pointers would be good. Making sure that the referenced tutorials match the versions in the Dell/Ubuntu 12.04 PPAs would be clutch.

Quick question…does it come with the power cord and adapter?? When I go to customize, it lists the power cord as an included item, but says nothing about the power adapter. And then the first page of accessories, it shows the adapter as something you have to buy separately for an extra ~$40. So do I have to add in the power adapter or does it come with one??

With all this talk about screen resolution I was looking for a thread to offer my 2 cents. I use it a little different than many other people and do not want anything larger or heavier.

I am a consultant and keep a laptop that goes with me to the client’s site to do things that cannot be done on their equipment/network, such as code to play with at lunch or conference videos, so I’ll take extra resolution when you can but this is already larger than it’s predecessor a 10″ Netbook tablet and I would not like to go bigger.

While I wasn’t the target of the question, I’ll reply anyways. I recently considered replacing my primary machine (a Latitude D830) after a hardware failure. After seeing the models available on the market, I ultimately decided to wait for better options (hopefully this project will become one of them).

Personally, I find that there is a large gulf between the 14″ and 15.6″ models currently available. While the 14″ form factor may be a bit small (especially considering the anemic resolutions available on these models), 15.6″ is really quite large to carry around.

I do a great deal of development, data analysis, and reading on my laptop. While all of these tasks require a large working area, I don’t want to be tied to an external monitor and desk. While 15.6″ with a 1920×1200 panel gives me this ability, it comes at the expense of portability. A 14″ model, on the other hand, is portable enough but really precludes any real work without an external monitor. Even a 1920×1200 display in this form factor would be practically limited due to the limitations of the human eye. I think an option between 14″ and 15″ (with a high dot density display, of course) would fill this void. Is somewhere around 14.5″ an option?

[…] XPS 13 Ultrabook™. George explains the hardware and software specs and more in his launch announcement here.Some time ago, he met with an analyst, who proposed his concept of an Ubuntu developer laptop. […]

This news item, [http://goo.gl/nLFUc] assuming it is true, is simply brilliant – Dell is bringing 1920 x 1080 as an option to the 13 inch XPS, and I hope the price doesn’t go up by too much :).

It is impressive that Barton and Dell managed to respond to the requests for a higher resolution within 3 weeks (by having the demo unit or the news out at the CES expo), and hopefully we will have the official news out soon.

Thanks, Barton and Dell. I just hope you would get the pricing right to allow us to be really wanting to buy this! 🙂

Just checking, though — how long will it take between the Windows model’s refresh (ETA later this month) and the developer edition? Will have to order it via friends, and if none of them are in the US at the moment I might have to get the standard model.

And there’s no hardware difference between the two, right? (In the past I had to customize my Dell order to make sure I get one with Intel wifi instead of the Dell-branded Broadcomm).

Was almost resigning myself to getting a Macbook Air until I remember about Sputnik 😀

That shouldn’t be the case. We have intended to price the Ubuntu version $50 less than same config running Windows. Every so often there are glitches so please let me know if for some reason this isn’t the case and we’ll fix it.

I’ve been looking for an ultrabook with good performance, nice display, decent touchpad, and good Linux support (not to mention no patents on rounded corners); this update to the display has finally convinced me (though I wouldn’t complain with a matte option!) Good on Dell for making this.

[…] Ubuntu-based XPS 13 developer edition series. The first generation of the developer edition debuted over six years ago and it, along with the Ubuntu-based Precision mobile workstations that launched […]

[…] Ubuntu-based XPS 13 developer edition series. The first generation of the developer edition debuted over six years ago and it, along with the Ubuntu-based Precision mobile workstations that launched […]

[…] Ubuntu-based XPS 13 developer edition series. The first generation of the developer edition debuted over six years ago and it, along with the Ubuntu-based Precision mobile workstations that launched […]